Saturday, December 11, 2004

"Enter into evil"

In order to achieve the most noble accomplishments, the leader may have to "enter into evil." This is the chilling insight that has made Machiavelli so feared, admired, and challenging. It is why we are drawn to him still....- Michael Ledeen, Machiavelli on Modern LeadershipIt must be a hard cross to bear for the Straussian neocons, to hear themselves called "inept" or even "crazy" by their occassional critics in mainstream America, who still refuse to see the method to their madness. It has to be a bitter pill, to be unable to say "You fools! Can't you see? This is some of our best work!"

Certainly 9/11 fits the bill. What a great stroke of bad luck that turned out to be. Iraq, too. It looks like the occupation is going to hell, and surely it is. But some people aren't all that broken up about it. The division of the country into three vassal states is the objective of the neoconservatives and the Likudniks. Iraq cannot be conquered, but it can be divided, which would ensure that it would never again be an economic or military threat to either US or Israeli interests. But how to justify ethnically Balkanizing the nation into toothless bantustans except by encouraging civil war and fostering chaos?

But we'd be wrong to lay everything at the feet of the neocons. They are merely the loudest and most radical exponents of the bipartisan consensus of the National Security State. The consensus can be said to encompass even the sainted Jimmy Carter. It was Carter's National Security Advisor, Zbigniew Brzezinski, who, as he says, "fired up" the Muslims against the socialist government of Afghanistan and precipated the Soviet incursion. (All part of the plan: "entering into evil" with the Mujahideen for the "greater good" of bleeding the Red Army white.) The lasting legacy of his administration is not conservation, but the Carter Doctrine, a Monroe Doctrine for the oil fields of the Gulf states.

And it's not the leaders alone who entered into evil. There was always a transparency about the shifting case for war that led the US into Iraq, so that many of those who "bought the lies" clearly knew full well what they were buying. The Bush administration was not lying to the base (in Arabic, "al Qaeda") of Republican power; it was winking at it. The leaders and the led contracted together to enter into evil for the "greater good" of kicking Saddam's ass.

Author Linda McQuaig told a comically sad story at the candlelight vigil outside the US consulate in Toronto to protest Bush's visit to Canada. She said she'd been called by a television producer and asked to appear the next day to discuss Canada-US relations. She said sure. Then the producer asked McQuaig about her thoughts on the Iraq war. She said it isn't about WMD or "liberation": it's about oil. (I guess the producer wasn't familiar with McQuaig's most recent book, It's the Crude, Dude.) The producer then said, "Okay, but are you for it, or against it?"

Eh? What a disturbing question to follow upon McQuaig's having underscored that she thought the expressed rationale for war was bogus. (And oh, the producer called back and said McQaig wasn't needed after all; they were going with The Globe and Mail's apologist for empire, Margaret Wente.)

But should it surprise us, that even television producers can enter into evil?

From an interesting Knight Ridder story of a few weeks ago, titled "Dangerous testing went beyond vets to orphans, prisoners":

In April 1953, the military helped the CIA launch a Cold War program known as MKULTRA, in which unsuspecting servicemen and civilians were given LSD and other psychedelic drugs to study their use as truth serums.

This cycle of government deception continued well into the 1970s, with thousands of Americans exposed to nuclear radiation, plutonium injections, chemical sprays from airplanes, open-air nerve agents and mescaline in secret tests.

The tests flouted the principle of informed consent in the Nuremberg Code, drafted after the Nazi war-crimes trials in 1947 as an ethical standard for human experimentation.

Sometimes the victims were military personnel. Often they were from society's most vulnerable populations: mentally ill people, prison inmates, poor or illiterate people, pregnant women, children who were retarded or orphaned, drug addicts or prostitutes.

"You've got to ask yourself, how did these scientists sleep at night?" said David Rothman, director of the Center for the Study of Society and Medicine at Columbia University and an expert on the history of human research.

The scientists slept, said expert Jonathan Moreno, by convincing themselves that their tests ultimately would save lives.

"They came to view their work as a patriotic thing to do," said Moreno, director of the Center for Biomedical Ethics at the University of Virginia and author of "Undue Risk: Secret State Experiments on Humans." "And they came to think that the volunteers knew what was going on, even if they didn't know all the details."

"How do they sleep at night?" people always cry, as they should. But the answers usually disappoint. And George Bush, the best rested president in modern history, likes to be in bed by 10 pm. In as much as he's aware of his government's actions, let alone their consequences, he sees the evil and calls it good.

Kathleen Sullivan, a survivor of CIA trauma-induced mind control programming, and so has more insight than most Americans regarding the well-intended evil of their government. She has a valuable perspective on the revelations of torture at Abu Ghraib:

Despite the news from Iraq, many people with whom I share my history still have a knee-jerk emotional reaction: "You must be making it up. I can't believe that this has been by our own government to US citizens - especially to children - right here in the US. I'm sorry - I am not willing to accept what you're saying." In spite of all that they are learning about the atrocities that intelligence spooks and interrogators and military personnel are capable of committing against fellow humans overseas, they aren't yet willing to face that such abuse is a historical emanation from the dark side of humanity.

...

Our stories are no less real than those of the Iraqi prisoners. Unfortunately, we are less likely to be believed by fellow citizens because our abuse was perpetrated – most often – by government employees within the borders of our countries. We were innocent civilians, not war prisoners. And what was done to most of us was much worse than what most of the Iraqi prisoners have unfortunately endured. (This is like comparing apples and oranges; both experiences are solid and real and directly related. Therefore, such a comparison is really a matter of the degree of trauma and torture and sexual degradation experienced by each survivor. Regardless of the degree, however, trauma is trauma. Every trauma is horrible, whether it lasts a day or a year or for decades.) The psychological scars and other results of the traumas we’ve endured are just as legitimate and consistent as the visible and invisible scars of the Iraqi prisoners, who will carry them in their minds and bodies – some, for the remainder of their lives. Deep humiliation and terror and rage cannot be conveniently erased when one is freed by ones tormentors.As you read North American survivors’ reports, I challenge you to compare them with the reports of prisoner abuse and murder that are coming out of Iraq and Afghanistan. Remember, we made our stories public long before these revelations began emerging from Iraq. As you compare the reports, you may be horrified to discover that this kind of sadistic abuse is not an aberration. It is, in fact, historical and ongoing....

...

Some survivors have reported that these reports and photos triggered strong flashbacks and powerful emotions that temporarily disabled them, leaving them unable to socialize and perform life duties as well as they normally might.

My own reactions were equally powerful. I cried more during this past two months, than I have in years. I experienced strong bouts of depression and alternating periods of great manic energy. Both seemed to be generated by my strong feelings of outrage: our government is still hurting others in some of the same ways that we North American mind-control survivors have been hurt!

Turning back to Ledeen:

Machiavelli is commonly taken to be saying that the ends always justify the means, but he does not believe that. Quite the contrary. He simply recognizes the reality that there are times when a leader must accept dreadful responsibility in serving the common good.

Ledeen speaks only a half truth here. Which, we must concede, isn't bad for him. But the "good" for which leaders will shoulder dreadful responsibility is rarely common. And also, even more rarely, will leaders be held responsible. Even to their conscience.

Kathleen Sullivan, as victims can, speaks the other half:

I had a dream.
In my dream the US was a safer place for others
than it had been for me in the past.

My dream country was a genuine democracy.

In it, torture, sexual assault, and murder
would never be committed or condoned by our government.

In it, our leaders were genuine, decent,
caring men and women.
They would never allow - or order -
government employees and private contractors to
wantonly torture, sexually violate, and murder defenseless humans.

969 Comments:

That guy on the cardboard box is home now. What's he do in the morning? Have some tea? Look out the window? What's he think of when he masturbates?Add in the mantra of "personal responsibility", and just keep repeating it until there's no more resistance to the idea. You have to take responsibility for your own actions. Which is the black zen of it, because that's what we're saying to the borgs in the laboratories; but it's also what we're not saying to the victims in the cages. How can they? "Hey, you're responsible for the electrodes, for the drugs, for the cold water on your bed at 3 am." Sure you are.How do they sleep at night? How does anything sleep at night?The fuller question is how can you retain your humanity and sleep at night - and the answer is they can't, they don't need to, it's gone.A dangerous part of Katherine Sullivan's story, aside from its irritation of the zombies and their dark Lords, is that it requires an opening of credulity, a suspension of cynical disbelief, an opening into which every nutball in America will try to insert him or herself. So the reaction becomes closed-minded disregard, intellectual triage, a pragmatic refusal to consider and we end back where we were, only without the initial hope of a hearing, because now the resistance is confirmed, deeper, and can only be removed by force.Crop circles inititally were part of that, cattle mutilations - cover stories to prepare the skeptics, so that the ego-based "in-the-know" illusion could be maintained. Since there were no aliens in New Mexico, there can have been no Mengelians in California.

good post jeff, you bring together a number of important points. and "this" i like your darkside comment.

Evil is a big and difficult word, and flippantly used all too often. "Who knows what evil lurks in the heart of man?". I don't but a site for good intelligent discourse of it is mykeru.com.

I will content myself with three of its letters: LIE. This, for sure, is a Straussian tactic, the use of the lie as an instrument of governance. One of the great current exponents of it is Tony Blair (who learned a lot from Clinton); he is, as we say, fucking brilliant. To hear him talk, he has the concern of every single individual in the world weighing heavily on his heart and on his shoulders; he speaks passionately about it, he speaks knowledgeably about it, and you can't but believe him when he says he spends every working moment to make all well with the world again. But it is all lies, out and out lies; the actual policies implemented are at complete variance with the rhetoric. We know them all, so i won't iterate here. My point is that focussing on the blatant contradictions between the rhetoric and the deed, this we can objectively identify, quantity, and characterize.

Politicians have always lied, i know, but this has moved onto a different level because of the adept manipulation of media. We all remember the mass graves in Yugoslavia, right? But who remembers that they were never found? I won't even mention Iraq or the Caucuses, the "dodgy dossier" doesn't touch the tip of the iceberg. The lie as a major instrument of government, delivered in a heartfelt way is what it is about. In the early days of Blair's regime this was called "spin", most pundits still do, but it is much much more deeply rotten than spin. It is the lie that would make Macciavelli proud.

There's considerable denial about the Faustian bargains being made. Last Spring I read extreme reactions from quite a few American progressives to a story in The Mirror, "My Hell in Camp X-Ray." They couldn't believe the account of abuse, particularly the use of prostitutes to sexually humiliate religious prisoners. The army would never do such a thing! Then came Abu Ghraib. And just a couple of days ago, the story of an Australian at Gitmo who charged he'd been offered use of a prostitute if he agreed to spy on fellow inmates.

First, there's denial. But eventually, for many, there's acceptance. How easily screams become background noise is one of the most worrisome considerations of our time.

But-- what the hell are we going to do about this "evil" besides sit and type deep dark missives into the computer?

As an American, I feel especially responsible for this evil going on in the name of my country. It weighs on me every day. I feel completely powerless to stop it. Maybe there is no stopping it.

I deeply want to do something to change things. But I have young kids and I want them to see them grow up. Also I just don't know what I could do that would really be effective to stop this madness. And it is serious maniacal madness that has gripped this country.

While of course there is always some evil done in the name of the US, the evil has clearly been an order of magnitude worse in the past four years.

To wit:1) the 9/11 attacks (which were clearly an inside job)2) the anthrax attacks (which were clearly an inside job)3) the invasion of Afghanistan and Iraq and the terrorizing of its citizens4) the torture of prisoners at Gitmo and Abu Ghraib and Afghanistan5) the assassination of Paul Wellstone-- who was perhaps the most honest politican in washington, certainly the most honest senator6) the insanely devious domestic policies of the Bush administration that contrive to undermine anything decent and humane done by the US government.

(There is likely more, but this is all I can think of right now.)

All these things are enough to rip apart the consciousness of any reasonable thinking citizen. All you can do is try to maintain your sanity-- perhaps drink heavily, perhaps just not think about these things. I wish I didn't have a family and I could commit my whole being into doing something about this madness. I feel like I have to do SOMETHING. Anyone have any ideas for what to do?

There is a site "Light a Candle in the Darkness"http://www.brandewyne.com/grounds/07_abbeyruins.html

"In the Dark Ages, when the whole of Europe stood on the edge of falling back into complete barbarism and total ignorance and illiteracy, missionaries of the Celtic Church --- the Irish monks and priests, particularly --- singlehandedly lit a candle in the darkness, so to speak, by preserving knowledge of the written word and spreading it across Europe, thus saving civilization (for more on this subject, read Thomas Cahill’s marvelous book How the Irish Saved Civilization)."The site has photos of ruins, old monuments, wells, etc. You preserve and you die, so what lives on?

I also recommend you take a trip to New Harmony in SW Indiana. It has a tinge of "new ageism" but its history is great, being associated with that great utopianist Robert Owen. You create and you die, so what lives on?

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